|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
NBA FINALS: CLEVELAND VS GOLDEN STATEMay 31, 2017David WestOakland, California: Practice Day Q. Being in the league this long, have you reflected on your journey here? DAVID WEST: Oh, I have. I have. ... It's just a great time. Being in that last fight, there's no other basketball but us. So it feels good. Q. You mentioned you guys getting after each other. How important is that accountability, especially in a moment like this? DAVID WEST: Yeah, that's just how we have been getting down all year. Our coaches really come in just to sort of keep us in line, but we really are player-motivated group. We all communicate. We have this edge about us. I think our juice all year is just the fact that we rely on one another to get each other going. We are on each other before the coaches have a chance or need to say anything because we want them to just give us the X's and O's and give us the things that we need to execute and be successful on the floor. We have a group that handles that internally in terms of the guys we have in the locker room and how much we rely on one another to say, I got your back, you got mine, let's go out here and approach this the right way. Q. How unique is that? DAVID WEST: Yeah, it's high level here. I think a lot of it has to do with Draymond. It's just his desire to want to win and get himself prepared as best as possible. He challenges the group every single day. I think sometimes if you just look at his body language, you read into more than actually the things that he is saying. He's really had a handle on this group in terms of just our prep, how well we're going to approach these Finals -- really the whole playoffs it's been that way. Q. As a newcomer to this team, how much obligation did you feel to make sure you weren't the guy to knock the team off track?. Was there a sense of that? DAVID WEST: Yeah, I learned a lot of years ago, it's like what type of temperature guy are you? When you come into an environment, do you break up that environment or do you keep that environment, make it better? I try to stay consistent to who I am. I feel like when I got here I could fill in some gaps and fill in some holes in terms of just the way these guys approach the game, the level of seriousness that it takes every single day. If you've ever been around us, we're pretty loose at times. But the accountability, the focus, the intent is always in the right place. Q. Have you seen that? When a guy breaks up the environment? DAVID WEST: We see it all the times in professional sports. A guy goes and turns the locker room the wrong way. One thing I said about this group is, we have 15 guys that wake up every day with the intent of doing the right thing. Nobody's waking up saying, I'm going to go this direction away from the direction the group is going. That's the strength of this group. Q. Did you feel any kinship with the other new guys? Like Zaza and Kevin? DAVID WEST: We just came in in late August, early September and just started to learn. Draymond just sort of set the tone, just welcoming everybody. And Steph and Klay the same way. They are just looking to bring guys into the fold. And particularly us, the new guys you're talking about, just being ourselves and adding what we have to the group. Q. Do you think Zaza will be affected by what happened in the last round at all? DAVID WEST: We're good. Zaza is going to be Zaza. Q. Draymond has just said that Kevin Love is susceptible to people getting under his skin. What gets under Kevin Love's skin? DAVID WEST: I don't know. He's a good player. But I think that it's just like in poker: Everybody's got a tell. With Draymond, I don't know what he's looking at, but the guy is a brilliant basketball player. So where there's smoke, there's fire. If he says there's something there, then there is something there. Q. Everybody always focuses on Klay's shooting and his scoring. DAVID WEST: First Team All-Defense. He should be. Absolutely should be. If he doesn't make that, somebody got it wrong. Q. What has he given you guys in the playoffs? DAVID WEST: Klay can guard just about anybody, and people don't dominate him. He is just as good on the defensive end as he is offensively, particularly on the ball. He guards the top point guards; he guards the top shooting guards; he's obviously going to have to guard LeBron some this series. He's solid. He's bottom heavy. He's smart, has good instincts and he's physical. You can't just move him and do what you want when he's defending you. Q. In some ways is this the perfect series for him to remind people how good he is defensively because of the players he is going against? DAVID WEST: Yeah, and he's done that all year. Draymond obviously gets a lot of the credit defensively; he's the engine. But Klay guards as well as anybody on the ball in the league. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|